Watch Your Mouth (15 page)

and his shoulders would sag with resignation, like a body found dead in a chair.

It was, that afternoon, just another twitchy orchestration, like the oboe which accompanies Zhivago’s announcement note-by- note. Cyn and I were stalking silently down the curiously dark hallway when the doctor suddenly stepped out of Mimi’s room and stood there in silent silhouette like a movie monster. Cyn broke her silence and shrieked, a little bit. “I’m sorry,” Dr. Zhi- vago said. Behind him we could see Stephen standing by the bed and stroking Mimi’s hand.

“It’s O.K.,” Cyn said. “You just startled me.”

“No,” Zhivago said, and put his clipboard behind his back. “I mean, I have some bad news. Your grandmother is dead.”

Cyn blinked, and frowning, chewed on a nail. Her face red- dened like she’d been slapped, or kissed a long, long time. “You can’t even—” she sputtered to him. “You can’t get them straight. It’s my
mother,
you—”

“No,” Zhivago said again. I watched Stephen lean in to kiss Mimi, watched her hand close around his like an anenome. “Your mother is doing better today, actually. It
is
your grand- mother. I mean, it
was.
She
was
—your grandmother is dead. We found her this morning. She died in her sleep.” Stephen and Mimi’s entwined hands moved up the bedsheets slowly as he murmured something to her I couldn’t hear. Zhivago stepped back and blocked my view; had the hands moved down to the metal railing, or up, to Mimi’s breasts? “She was watching over your mother and died in her sleep. I’m very sorry.”

“My—
grandmother?
” Cyn, too, was trying to look over Zhi- vago’s shoulder. It’s difficult to twist your body that way, and

sing the rather complicated scale to which
“grandmother?”
is set. “My—somebody just
found
her, just like that? My
grand- mother?
”

“Your mother is fine,” he said. Now I could only see a bit of Stephen, just his skinny legs, bare beneath his shorts, and his dangling feet. In decades back, couples were allowed to be alone as long as the chaperone, peering from a discreet distance, could see everyone’s feet on the floor. Now I saw one of Stephen’s legs raise like he was mounting a horse, and Zhivago, following my eyes, shut the door softly. “Mrs. Glass is fine,” he said. “It’s your grandmother who is dead.” There were all sorts of bedside man- ners going on here, and none of them were good. All behavior exists within a social and cultural context, but what explained this, this ghost story doctor, this mounting son?

“My
grandmother?
” Cyn said again. She looked at me like she couldn’t quite place me. “My
grandmother?
”

“What happened to your grandmother?” Ben said behind us, and we all jumped. He was looking at Cyn and me with the elaborate care of not looking at somebody else. Dr. Zhivago coughed and put his hand on Ben’s shoulder.

“Mimi is dead,” he said.

Ben looked from the hand on his shoulder, to Zhivago’s eyes, and back, several times, hand-eyes, hand-eyes, hand-eyes. “What?” he whispered.

“I thought you said she was fine,” I said, pointing to the closed door.

“Gramma—Gramma’s name—she’s
also
Mimi,” Cyn said, and then, with a trill of cellos, shuddered.

“What?” Ben said again. “My mother—”

“She was watching over Mimi,” Zhivago said. “We found her this morning. Just—in her sleep.”

Ben shook his hand away. “What?”

Cyn reached out to her father’s shoulder. Her face was so calm, so sober and professional it looked like she was offering him a position. I mean a
job.
“Your mother is dead,” she said.

“
My
mother?” he said. “Not
your
—” “Mom’s all right,” she said.

“Well, not really all right,” Zhivago said.

“It’s Gramma. She died in her sleep,” Cyn said.

Ben blinked, didn’t get it, blinked, got it. “Oh,” he said, and his shoulder sagged like someone had let go of the strings.
“Oh,”
he said, louder. Cyn put a hand on his shoulder and he shook it off. His eyes were fixed on Zhivago.

“No,” Dr. Zhivago said. “You can’t see her.” “She’s my
mother!
” he shouted.

“Oh,” he said. “You can see
her.
She’s downstairs. We took her downstairs. You can’t see your wife.”

“What’s
going on?
”

“Your wife,” Zhivago said, “is leaving you. Whether she re- covers or not.”

“What?”

“Your wife,” Zhivago said, and this time he shrugged, almost. The cellos shrug, too, a low, noncommital growl. “Your wife is leaving you. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”

There was a pause—the conductor, arms raised, looks like he’s about to sneeze—and then
blast!
, the trumpets scream in as Ben leapt at the doctor with a roar. Cyn grabbed him by the waist, but his arms kept going, clenched and roaring. Zhivago

stepped aside in one clean lurch, and then grabbed Ben’s wrists. The clipboard clattered to the Orderly-shined floor.

“What?”
Ben screamed.
“What? What? What?”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Zhivago said. “I’m sorry—”

“What? What?”

“Um, Cynthia, could you—” Dr. Zhivago moved Ben’s wrists to my girlfriend, offering them. “Could you take your father—” “Ben,” she said, and then, glancing at me, changed it. “Dad,” she said. “Come on.” Ben was rumbling like a volcano; the tim- panist, by now, is getting blisters, and the golem hasn’t even

shown up.

“What?”
he screamed again, and Cyn burst into tears. Zhi- vago dropped Ben’s arms, and Ben dropped his own arms, and Cyn let go of her father and I stepped toward Cyn to put my arms around her.
This,
I thought:
this
I could offer her, shelter from tears, me and nobody else. But Ben hugged her, too, awk- wardly covering my arms as well until we must have looked like an orgy, with Zhivago standing sternly over us. I let go, and stepped back, and the two Glasses walked, entangled and cry- ing, down the hallway leaving me alone with the chaperone.

Zhivago coughed. I leaned down and picked up the clipboard from where it fell, and when I glanced at it I saw it was a prop. For the audience, this will not be such a surprise, but we in the hospital expect the real thing from doctors. On the top page— and on the other pages, as I flipped through them—there was nothing but squiggles, semblances of writing that when viewed from a distance, could look like notes. Up close I could tell he hadn’t written anything down, never, the whole time he was taking notes. On each page were little wavy lines, just a little

sketch of the surface of the sea. It was a prop. It was fake. “What is—” I said. I was the child unable to inquire. “This is
nothing.
What’s—”

Zhivago put an arm of clear threat around me, a thug hug:
How’s the family?
“Joseph,” he said to me, “I think you should go home.”

“I—”

“I mean
home,
Joseph. You don’t belong here. This is a family time. The
Glass
family.”

“These notes,” I said, handing them to him, “are blank.” “Look around you, Joseph,” he continued smoothly. “A

woman is dying. Another woman is dead. Just go home, Joseph. This isn’t your family.”

I tried again. “Why aren’t you taking any notes?”

He looked at me sharply and snatched the clipboard from my hands. He glanced at it and took his arm from around me. “You shouldn’t be concerning yourself with Mimi,” he said.

“Those aren’t notes!”
I said, and Mimi’s door opened and Ste- phen, flushed and rumpled, stepped out of the room.

“My handwriting,” Zhivago said stiffly, smiling at Stephen, “is illegible. Like all doctors’. We’re doing all we can, let me assure you.”

“Is she going to be O.K.?” Stephen asked Zhivago hoarsely. “We’re doing all we can,” he said again.

“I can’t live without her,” Stephen said simply, and leaned up against the wall. Half his shirt was untucked. “I’m not—I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I’m not eating without her.” This, at least, was true; with Mimi in the hospital all of us were just heating stuff up and then retiring immediately to our bedrooms. Cyn didn’t even come up to the attic any more, though she didn’t

go to sleep; I lay awake all night listening to all the bedroom doors open and close like chattering teeth. “Is she—”

“We’re doing,” Zhivago said, “all we can.” “Where’s Gramma?” he said.

“Your father has arrived,” he said, gesturing down the hall- way. “Find your father, Stephen.” Stephen put a finger in his mouth like he’d cut it, and walked down the hallway, the noise of his sandals bouncing off the walls. “Frank,” I heard Mimi call weakly from her room.
“Frank.”
After lurking behind the door during this whole scene we finally hear from the dying woman. “Frank.”

“Just a minute,” Zhivago—
Frank,
I guess—called to her. He put a hand on the doorjamb and looked at me. “You see?” he said, gesturing to Stephen, still wandering down the hall like a freezing orphan. “You shouldn’t be here. This doesn’t really con- cern you, Joseph. This woman—this mother—is very sick. She’s in horrible pain. She can’t even bend her
knees,
Joseph.” Mimi called him again. “This—this isn’t about you.”

“I love her,” I said, trying one more time.

He almost rolled his eyes. “
Everybody
loves her,” he said, gesturing into the room.

“Cynthia,” I said. “I love Cynthia.” I hadn’t said that for so long I felt like it wasn’t much of an explanation, like it wasn’t enough, or wasn’t true. Something slipped into my hand like a secret note was passed me; when I looked down Cyn was stand- ing next to me, her little palm inside mine. Zhivago opened his mouth, closed it, walked through Mimi’s door, and closed it.

“Joseph,” she said. Her voice was sad, and unaccompanied. I haven’t talked of it enough, but this is a love story, you know. A love opera. It just has a sad ending. Maybe because it was a

hospital, I looked at Cyn and for one clear moment, didn’t see an inch of her body. I bent towards her and felt in that instant something patient and vulnerable, some internal rhythm behind all this orchestration, and the rushing of my blood.

“I love you,” I said again, but here the orchestra kicks back in: T.U.D.

“Joseph, I—”

“Look,” I said. “Let’s leave. Let’s get out of here. Both of us.

Together or something.” “I can’t,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “You know? We could go back to Mather. Or drive off somewhere, like a movie.”

“I can’t,” she said. It wasn’t a movie. “You
can,
” I said.

“I don’t want to,” she said simply, and let my hand go. I looked at her fingers; everything was stained. I saw Cyn’s spi- dery hand and remembered what it had clutched, what she had done. I took a step backwards and closed my eyes.

“This family,” I said. “This family has done terrible things to you, Cyn. This isn’t right.”

“They aren’t happening to
me,
” she said. She pointed at the hospital wall like I hadn’t seen something that was plastered there. “They’re just
happening.
”

“No,” I said.

“I have to stay here,” she said. “This is my mother.”

“I
know,
” I hissed, stunned at the fury in my throat. Every- thing was hot. “I
know
what you’ve done, Cyn.”

She just looked at me: that’s all she did. Just
looked
at me, blank and wrong. An eyebrow went up like a periscope. “You
know
—”

“That little—
that little table,
” I said. I blinked, burned. “That
little table,
Cyn. The window over it makes the wind blow. It opened the door of Stephen’s room.”

“What are you talking about?”
she screamed. She put her hands to her ears.
“What are you talking about?”

“I
saw!
I
know!”

“No!
” she screamed. Her face was red, or maybe everything was: my eyes, looking at everything and turning it all red. Cyn was crying. “I don’t—I can’t hear this. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but
you can’t go crazy!
This isn’t—
this isn’t you! This isn’t about you!”

“I saw it!”

“What are you talking about?”
she screamed.
“Get out of here!

My mother—”

“Your mother
knows,
” I spat, and shuddered. The room rum- bled around me with the brass, and the percussion and all this drama. “She’s—your mother
knows,
Cyn. She was
listening
! She’s—”

“She’s dying!”
Cyn screamed, and Dr. Zhivago opened the door. Behind his sharp-angled body I could see Mimi, sitting up on the complicated metallic bed. I saw her pale hospital face, framed with her unwashed hospital hair and plastered with that hospital grimace of pain. And something else. I stalked past Zhivago and right up to Mimi to make sure I hadn’t missed it. She followed my eyes and then, dropping the grimace for a smile, leaned up to me to speak. I heard Zhivago stomping to- ward me, and Cyn crying in the hallway; she didn’t have much time.

“They won’t—”
she croaked, and frowned.

“What—
What are you talking about?”
Cyn screamed at me,

and I felt Zhivago’s hand on my arm. Mimi looked at me and shrugged.

“They won’t what?” I asked.
“What?”

“What are you talking about?”
Cyn screamed again, and I re- alized maybe she wasn’t screaming at me.

“I want you out of here,” Zhivago said, pulling at me.

“They won’t what?”
I asked, and Zhivago stopped. The or- chestra waits.

“They won’t,” she said finally, and smiled like a skull, “be- lieve you.”

“Out,”
Zhivago said, reanimated. He dragged me toward the door. I looked right at Mimi. I wouldn’t forget what I saw.

“It’s unbelievable!”
she shouted, and from her throat she spat a loud cackle.
“It’s unbelievable!”